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Comment by nephihaha | Hacker News Reader

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By storing carbon they are meaning that the wetlands literately store CO2, and if they are allowed to break down that carbon will largely be released back into the active cycle and be part of our current atmospheric problems. Much like the oceans hold an amount CO2, a large amount because of their size, but as they heat up this is less efficient so they hold less and the excess seeps into the atmosphere.

Those areas are probably not capturing/trapping further carbon, they have probably been at an equilibrium point for quite some time with some entering & leaving the system without the overall amount not increasing, but they are effectively storing a notable amount that would be released if the properties that enable them to hold onto it degrade.

Carbon dioxide is not "carbon", it is a compound of carbon. Compounds do not always behave much like the elements they are made up of. We need to change the rhetoric on this: "reducing carbon" is nonsensical, considering you, me and all the plants and animals around us contain carbon compounds. If they mean anthropogenic climate change, then there are better ways to phrase it.

It's pretty well understood in the scientific communities studying this topic what carbon means and why carbon is the biggest driver of climate change and warming.... Do you have a particular issue or just the usual well poisoning on human caused climate change.

What is the difference between "storing carbon" vs. "trapping carbon"?

In the first case the carbon dioxide is already concentrated, and in the second it has to be extracted by processing (at least) 2500 tons of air for each ton of carbon dioxide obtained. There are easier cases for carbon capture, when CO2 can actually be captured at the point of release (steel and cement plants, landfills) but atmospheric extraction is hard. Of course, plants can and do process lots of air (by it blowing over the leaves) but massively increasing plant growth is also hard.

probably mostly pedantry, but a lot of things can naturally store carbon, so maybe trapping carbon is specifically the unnatural capture of it?

Did you read the article?

As someone else pointed out, I use phrases which appear in the article. I read the story twice on different sites.

Handing control over to a United Nations group on another continent is not empowering indigenous people and it is disingenuous to imply that such giveaways of local autonomy would do so.

Did you? All of those phrases appear in it.

Just because a phrase appears, doesn't lead to what you said. "UNESCO" appears once, but no where says UN people "are being brought in to administer it".

UNESCO is an unelected NGO run by the United Nations based on another continent. There are plenty of other buzzwords such groups love such as "resilience" and "sustainability", which they have effectively redefined.

What "did I say"? Keep in mind that I am not nephihaha.

Those are real words, that’s true. The following however is anywhere from not true to wild speculation without any factual basis.

>Global responsibility sounds like the direct opposite of self-determination.

>Some United Nations NGO bureaucrats being brought in to administer it, without acknowledging local knowledge. Getting UNESCO to administer it is not "honoring indigenous traditions"

>Also "store carbon", is more cargo cult pop science.

>They are probably trying to refer to trapping and reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but this is a misleading way of doing so.

It isn't speculation. The article talks about local tribes and UNESCO as if the two ever had much in common. That isn't wild speculation.

We also need to stop referring to carbon dioxide as carbon. It may be a compound of carbon but it is not the same thing. Elemental carbon is not the problem.

> Those are real words, that’s true. [...]

Yeah that's a strawman.

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